How a masters in art and design is hatching business-smart creatives

Increasingly, innovative thinkers are using skills learnt studying a postgraduate degree in art and design to unlock their creativity in businesses of all kinds.

Daryl Goh, Master of Fine Art graduate.

While studying a Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a highly effective approach for anyone with business leadership in their sights, there are alternative routes to that same destination.

As businesses become more agile, creative workers are being prized for their ability to “think outside the box, offer a fresh perspective, and for often relying more on expert intuition rather than purely on rationality”, says Gerda Gemser, an RMIT Professor of Design based in the College of Business.

No one exemplifies this creative shift more than Daryl Goh, an award-winning artist, curator and educator from Singapore who supercharged his natural entrepreneurial spirit by studying a Master of Fine Art (MFA) at RMIT.

Goh’s work explores the limits of perception and the collision of media across sculpture, installation art, light projection, sound design and photography.

Among the lessons Goh learnt while studying his degree is one that could revolutionise business in the future: that creative thinking is incredibly valued outside of artistic fields.

Business celebrates creativity

Since graduating, Goh has pursued business-minded innovations outside the studio, like the projection-mapped retail space, Installation Lucid, and Singapore’s first and only free artist residency program, NPE Art Residency.

On these projects he collaborated with Epson Southeast Asia, the Singapore Tourism Board, NPE Print Communications and more.

Goh says that studying an MFA helped him hone his natural abilities in adaptive and useful ways for the corporate world.

“The skills you learn in creative fields are easily translatable, such as being able to take criticism, use failure as a learning opportunity, take calculated risks, and balance instinct with reason,” he says.